Trust , Amritsar ) )
Dr Saif ud Din Kitchloo was out and out a nationalist leader who fought against the British Raj. He was from a well-settled Kashmiri Muslim family of Amritsar. He was the General Secretary of AICC and also headed the Punjab unit of AICC before the partition of the country.A hero of Jalianwala Bagh, he spent more than 14 years in prison during the British Raj. A Gandhian, he built Swaraj Bhawan in Amritsar which became a hub of Hindu-Muslim unity.
Recurring floods, Cholera epidemics,
famines, lack of employment avenues, shawl Business and suppression were the
main reasons for the migration of Kashmiris from the Valley during the nineteenth
century. By Kashmiris I mean both Pandits and Muslims. These migrants
settled mostly in Punjab and Delhi. Some Pandits moved further towards the
princely states presently known as United Provinces (UP), MP, and Rajasthan.
The Kashmiri Muslims confined themselves mostly in Punjab concentrating in and
around cities of Lahore, Ludhiana and Amritsar. One such Kashmiri Muslim family
that moved to Amritsar was Ahmed Joo Kitchloo. Ahmed Joo owned a Pashmina and
saffron trading business and originally belonged to a Kashmiri Brahmin family
from Baramulla. Ahmed Joo’s grandfather Prakash Ram Kitchloo had embraced Islam.
Dr Saif ud Din was the grandchild of Ahmed Joo and the son of Aziz ud Din Kitchloo. He was born in Amritsar in January 1888. Young Saif
ud Din did his Initial schooling in Amritsar and went to Cambridge and
Germany to complete his doctorate. After his return to India, he started his
legal practice and married the daughter of Hafeez Ullah Manto another Kashmiri
lawyer from Amritsar. In 1919 he was elected Municipal Commissioner of
the Amritsar city. He was drawn towards
the Freedom Movement of the country under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. He
took part in Gandhi Ji's Satyagraha (Non-cooperation) Movement and soon left
his lucrative practice to become a part
of the Freedom Movement of the country. He also became an active member of the
All India Khilafat committee.
“There is
a new dimension to anti-colonial consciousness among Kashmiris living in
Amritsar just before the partition of the country. The notable amongst them
are Abdul Salam Rafiqi, Dr Saifuddin Kitchloo and Abdul Majid. Abdul Majid, a
Kashmiri was one of the founders of the communist party of India in Tashkent in
1925. Dr Kitchloo, the hero who inspired the struggle against the Rowlatt Act, went on
to play a leading role in the Indian National Congress movement. In 1891 the number
of Kashmiri Muslims in Amritsar was 21, 261. It was one-third of the total
Muslim population and one-sixth of the total population of Amritsar. By the
last decade of the nineteenth century, a few Kashmiri families had become rich
enough to influence the politics of the Amritsar city. Among these families
were Shaikh Ahmad Sadiq, chairman of the Amritsar Municipal Committee, Shaikh
Sadiq Hasan, a member of the Central Legislative and Punjab Legislative
Assembly for Amritsar, Shaikh Muhammad Sadiq, a member of the Punjab Legislative
Council from Amritsar.The strongest opposition to Rowlatt Act passed by British
Rulers in March 1891 was organised and led by Dr Saif Ud Din Kitchloo in the entire
Punjab. He asked people to take the vow of Satyagraha given by Gandhi to
liberate their country constitutionally. He denounced the British
bureaucracy and encouraged the people to protest against the present mode of
administration. He made extraordinary efforts to forge unity among different
factions of the Punjabi society and create a dynamic force against the despotic
and tyrannical administration of General Dyer. Dr Kitchloo demanded Home Rule
and envisaged an India having the same political powers or autonomy as
other British colonies. As the agitation against the Bills mounted, Gandhi gave
a call for nationwide Hartal. The date was initially fixed for 30 March but was
later changed to 6 April as it was thought that enough notice had not been
given. Dr Kitchloo was in the forefront on both days.Hartal was observed
all over Punjab on March 30, 1919, and a mass meeting was held at Jallianwalla
Bagh, attended by some 30,000 people. On April 4th, Dr Kitchloo and some
activists were served with orders under the Defence of India Act, prohibiting them
from addressing or attending public meetings.On April 6th, there was a country-wide Hartal. It was observed principally in Amritsar, without any
effort on the part of any local leader. There was no police interference. With
Satyapal, Dr Kitchloo surcharged the people of Amritsar emotionally on Ram
Naumi day i.e. 9 April. For the first time in the history of Amritsar, the
Muslims had joined the traditional Hindu festival. It was the Hindu-Muslim
unity which was disturbing the British authorities. Dr Satyapal and Dr Kitchloo
were taken into custody and deported to Dharamsala. The move proved
self-defeating. The events that followed were due to premeditated action on the
part of the Punjab government i.e. the arrest of two beloved leaders. Dr
Kitchloo warned the Deputy Commissioner that their arrest could lead to violence.
In the end, he wrote a letter to his wife asking her to calm the people on his
behalf. But the letter was never delivered to her.The citizens of Amritsar
went in a procession to the Deputy Commissioner’s bungalow. The procession was fired
upon in which three to four persons were killed and many more wounded. Soon the
news of these killings spread. Thousands of people in Amritsar city went on a
rampage and burnt a number of buildings including the Town Hall. They looted
the National Bank and killed its manager. Zanana Hospital was attacked. Miss
Sharewood was assaulted. An English man was killed at Rego-bridge. The
destruction and looting of the city continued till 5.00 p.m. The city of
Amritsar was put under the military administration of Brigadier General Dyer.
Martial Law was proclaimed. On the morning of 13 April, Dyer made a
proclamation prohibiting processions and meetings. At about the same time
a boy was announcing by beating a tin can that a meeting would be held at 4.00
p.m. in Jallianawala Bagh. 20,000 people gathered in Jallianwala Bagh to
protest against the barbarous actions of the Punjab regime, and to demand the
release of their leaders. On the ‘presidential chair’ the picture of their
leader Kitchloo was placed. Soon General Dyer entered with 150 soldiers. No
notice was given to the mass of the people to disperse and within three minutes
he ordered his troops to fire. In all 1650 rounds were fired from a range of
forty to fifty yards. The firing lasted for ten minutes. He stopped firing because
ammunition was running low.According to official estimates (The Hunter
Committee Report), 379 people were killed and 1200 wounded. General Dyer was
directing the shooting where the crowd was the thickest. After the massacre,
the wounded were left along with the dead to die in agony and no medical
assistance was permitted. Subsequently, a reign of terror was unleashed
throughout Punjab. While scores of Punjabis were hanged, imprisoned and
flogged, the British accused Dr Kitchloo of being number one in the Amritsar
conspiracy case. The whole trial was a farce. He was sentenced to life
imprisonment but the public opinion in Britain caused the British government to
release Dr Kitchloo. The Rowlatt agitation in Amritsar witnessed unprecedented
Muslim participation. Out of the total 151 sentenced to death from Amritsar
City, thirty were Muslims. The accused in the Rego Bridge murder case, Mani and
Muhammed Shafi were Kashmiri Muslims. Aziz another Kashmiri artisan was
sentenced to death in the Alliance Bank murder case. Miles Irving, DC of Amritsar
in his report attributed rioting to Kashmiris.”
Like Maulana Azad, Saif Ud din Kitchlu opposed the Two Nation Theory and the partition of the country.He remained steadfast in his commitment to secularism and shifted to Delhi after his house was burnt by arsonists in 1947 and later spent the rest of his years working for closer political and diplomatic relations with the USSR. He received the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952, which was renamed the Lenin Peace Prize under De-Stalinization. In 1951, a Government Act made him, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, life trustees of the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Trust. He died on October 9, 1963. His son, Toufique Kitchloo, lived in a Lampur village on the outskirts of Delhi and one of his daughters Zahida Kitchloo, married M B Sreenivasan, the well-known Malayalam music director. MBS as he was known to millions of his fans the world over, produced many hits in Malayalam films. His style of music involved only minimal orchestration. He is the one who introduced the legendary singer Yesudas to the film industry. A son was also born to Zahida and M B Sreenivasan who was fondly named Kabir. But no member of this family survives today.
.
In 1989, the Government Of India released a commemorative stamp in honour of Dr Kitchloo. Toufique Kitchloo (son of Dr Kitchloo) has also written a book on his father titled " Dr Saif Ud Din Kitchlew Hero Of Jalianwala Bagh".Toufique (Born in 1932) has done an MA in history from Delhi University and has lived in Poland, Germany and Ethiopia.
After 1947, the new political dispensation at the helm of affairs sidelined Dr Saif ud din Kitchloo. Not much importance was accorded to his role as a freedom fighter and the real architect of Hindu-Muslim unity at the critical turn of history. Never did he complain or express any dissatisfaction. I end this post with lines from a poem of Prof Ale Ahmed Suroor:-
“kar diya barq-o-bukhaaraat ne mahashar barpa,
Apane daftar me litaafat ke sivaa kuchh bhi nahin.
Gir gaye waqt ki berahm kashaakash me magar,
Paas tahazeeb ki daulat ke siva kuchh bhi nahin”…. ( Ale Ahmed Surooor)
(This lightening and heat has created
the day of the last Judgement in our world,
In our dealings, nothing exists beyond politeness.
Trapped we have been in the merciless struggle of this age,
But for the wealth of the beliefs,
We have nothing to put on display.)
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